


Under her skin

by RobinWritesChirps



Category: Firebringer - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bickering, F/F, Fluff and Humor, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2020-10-26 15:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20744318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinWritesChirps/pseuds/RobinWritesChirps
Summary: For a week, they didn't talk. By the second, they made acquaintance just enough to know that their entire lives, from their routines or lack thereof to their music preferences or study habits, and every other detail along the way, were radically opposite. Snappy words began to be exchanged along the third week and by the end of the fourth, Jemilla offered a plan."Look, we can't keep hating each other all year.""Oh, don't sell yourself short, Jemilla, I'm sure we can if we put enough work."Jazzalil roommates AU or, peace really is something you make together.





	1. Monday: The Getting-Along-Week Starts

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This was initially going to be a long-ish one-shot but I've just decided to post it chapter by chapter instead because it was getting too long. Not all chapters will be as long as this first one, though! Hope you enjoy :) 
> 
> Note that rating WILL change in later chapters. (insert Jack Bauer's *gon' get it on* song here)

Zazzalil regretted every past decision the instant the first note of Jemilla's alarm rang through their small room. Some cheerful song, just wacky enough to be annoying, guitar melody and a cowboy kind of voice. Dozens of times before, she had slammed a pillow over her head, turned over and ignored it. She was tempted to do very much the same thing this morning but Jemilla had sprung to her feet at the first sound and Zazzalil felt without opening her eyes her presence looming over her.

"Rise and shine, little flower," Jemilla teased.

Zazzalil groaned painfully. Was it too late to call back the arrangement, simply turn her back to Jemilla and go to sleep again undisturbed? But that was counting on too much cooperation from the annoying, boring, way over-sassy hurricane of a roommate fate had assigned to her. It took but a few seconds of silent idleness for Jemilla to start gently shaking her shoulder. The bed dipped with her weight next to Zazzalil. She squinted her eyes shut even tighter.

"Come on, buddy, it's six o'clock, sleepy time's over."

Zazzalil gave as reproachful a grunt as she was able. If she pressed herself close enough into her pillow, maybe her skin would melt into the fabric and she would finally become one with her bed... A faint clanging sound came from behind her back and Jemilla gave her shoulder one last pat.

"Aspirin," she said. "And I won't say anything about you spending all night with Keeri god knows where yesterday."

"You're saying something about it right now," Zazzalil retorted under her breath.

She yawned. Had it truly been hours since she had gone to bed? Not many hours, perhaps, yet much longer than her impression of hardly a few minutes since she had laid down her head on her pillow. This week was a bad idea. The Jemilla way was a bad idea wrapped up neatly in color-coded binders and tightly organized diaries. The weight lifted off her mattress.

"I'm taking a shower first," Jemilla announced as if that had in any way been the object of debate. "You'll be taking yours as soon as I'm done, Sleeping Beauty. Up."

The soft thud of Jemilla's footsteps away from Zazzalil's bed and the bathroom door shut with a quiet click. Zazzalil waited some more, clenching her eyes so hard her head hurt with it. Finally, the water started running and she opened them one at a time, then both at once, blinking rapidly to wake herself up.

Every muscle in her body ached with exhaustion, including the ones she didn't know about and possibly even new ones that might as well have appeared during the night, so sore she felt. The aspirin had stopped fizzing in the mug Jemilla had left on her nightstand. She swirled the white-ish liquid around before swallowing it all in one long nasty gulp and sighing loudly in disgust once it was all down. She grimaced. So maybe it had been a bad idea to drink herself stupid last night at Keeri's. Just for the sake of never, ever admitting Jemilla was right about anything, she would keep that thought to herself. It had, after all, been entirely necessary to clear her mind one last time before the Jemilla hell unleashed.

Under the shower, Jemilla was singing. Zazzalil wondered if this was a sign of exceptional good mood from her roommate on the occasion of their getting-along-week or if this was a daily occurrence she had missed for the month they had been living together for the simple reason that Jemilla woke with the birds and she woke with difficulty and pain. Jemilla sang... well. Really well, even, some melody from the 80s, much too joyful for six in the morning. That somehow irritated Zazzalil and she sank her face into her hands.

"What have I gotten myself into..."

For their junior year, Keeri and Zazzalil had decided to room together. They had before, anyways, and still were, after all, so close, spending most of their free time together or communicating in some way when they weren't, that it only made sense to get rid of that separation in the first place. This project, however, was entirely undercut by the disappointing realization that both of them had counted on the other to introduce the double form for a shared dorm room. As a result, neither of them had done it and when finally their misunderstanding came to light, it was too late to change it. Disappointingly but without surprise, they were assigned to different rooms. They weren't even in the same building and, worst of all, Zazzalil had to share her room with a certain Jemilla, who turned out to be the very definition of boring and annoying.

They had started on the wrong foot, too.

Zazzalil arrived at the dorm the day just before classes with the large ragged suitcase that had contained all her possessions since she had started jumping from house to house over a decade ago. She found half of her room already seized by an absent but evidently neat, tidy, proper roommate. Binders waiting to be filled lined the back of her desk, beautifully arranged postcards and pictures on her half of the wall, cute teal striped linens on a bed that was perfectly made, clothes filling the right side of the shared dresser and not one inch crossing over her half, everything about Jemilla's side was just all so perfect and smelled great and looked neat and cute. Zazzalil would be impressed, if she wasn't also anxious about living with the kind of person whose room looked like that.

"Oh my god!" Keeri exclaimed and leapt into the air to land face first flat on the bed. "They've made your bed for you and everything, it's so cool!"

Zazzalil grabbed her shoulder in panic - somehow it seemed deeply wrong to disturb even a speck of dust on the other side of the room.

"_That's my roommate's bed,_" she hissed. "Jeez, Keeri, you can't just jump on other people's beds."

"Oh..."

She switched to the empty bare bed on the opposite side of the room and Zazzalil found herself safe in leaving her be while she dropped her own things in the space so tidily left empty by Jemilla, a name she had picked up from the plaque outside their door. That was her first mistake. Keeri was responsible for the second one.

The door opened so quietly neither of them would have noticed if it weren't for the cry that followed.

"Do you _mind_?!"

A loud crash across the entire room and before she knew it, Zazzalil's possible friendship with Jemilla shattered along with the glass snowball Keeri had been looking at behind her back and, startled, dropped to the ground. She sank to her knees to try and gather all broken pieces but not a second passed before she hissed in pain and sucked a finger into her mouth.

"Oh fuck, are you hurt?"

That was the last mistake, caring about Keeri's finger more than about the snow globe − which she learned later was a gift and rather meaningful. Third strike, Zazzalil was out.

"Of course she's hurt," Jemilla retorted smugly, "She's tried to pick up shards of glass with her bare hands."

But in an eyeblink, she opened a box sitting neatly on her shelf and picked a bandaid and a bottle of disinfectant from it. Kneeling beside Keeri, she grabbed her hand softly to have a look. Just a scratch, but bleeding a little.

"I'd say I'm hoping that you're not intruders and that one of you is, in fact, my roommate Zazzalil," Jemilla said. She took her time carefully binding Keeri's finger but, then as now, there was anger in her patience. "But actually, I'm not sure I'm hoping that at all."

Keeri looked at her finger, tried to flex it but winced in pain.

"That's Zazzy," she said, pointing with the stiff bandaged finger, getting used to it. "I'm just her familiar."

Jemilla turned to Zazz for the first time and stared. She was pretty. Beautiful, even. A cute bob of curls, thicker than Zazzalil's, round face that would be gorgeous if she smiled, large light brown eyes staring at her suspiciously.

"It's me," she said, waving a bit awkwardly. "Zazz."

She held up her hand for a fistbump that never came. Jemilla's eyes pierced through her and evidently came to a conclusion. Whatever it was, she didn't voice it but Zazzalil had a guess regardless.

"_Zazzalil_," she repeated with disdain. "Looks like you and I will be fast friends."

For a week, they didn't talk. By the second, they made acquaintance just enough to know that their entire lives, from their routines or lack thereof to their music preferences or study habits, and every other detail along the way, were radically opposite. Snappy words began to be exchanged along the third week and by the end of the fourth, Jemilla offered a plan.

"Look, we can't keep hating each other all year."

Zazzalil wasn't bothered to look up from her phone. Keeri had been sending her pictures of her new lizard wearing as many cute lizard-sized outfits of her own designs. That was and always would be much more interesting than anything Jemilla might say to her.

"Oh, don't sell yourself short, Jemilla, I'm sure we can if we put enough _work_."

Credit to her seemingly immense patience, Jemilla did not risk a comment on that. Looming over next to Zazzalil's bed, she kept herself very composed.

"I don't want that. Do you?"

Zazzalil's conscience tugged with something like doubt. Hesitantly and holding back a sigh, she looked up at Jemilla. Her phone lit up with the notification for another picture of Ms Lizzy Bennett but she didn't pull it up.

"Maybe not," she muttered.

Jemilla lingered at her bedside before settling on pulling her desk chair and sitting on it rather than on Zazzalil's bed. Their spaces were strictly divided and unless they were absolutely forced to for common areas, never ever crossed. She put on a fake polite smile before going on, which made Zazzalil somehow wary and soothed at the same time. She frowned.

"I have a proposition."

A dozen of snarky and downright bratty remarks flooded Zazzalil's mind but, for the sake of trying to have a conversation for the first time ever, she bit them back and nodded.

"You know the saying, you can't understand someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes?"

"You're not taking my sneakers!" Zazzalil cried out. "That's my only pair."

Jemilla stared unamused and Zazzalil pouted away.

"You and I are very..." She breathed out sharply, "Very, _very_ different people."

Zazzalil huffed but thought she had missed her right to retort anything funny for now.

"We've started out under some, uh, unfortunate circumstances and I haven't made enough effort to reconcile. I apologize for that."

Zazzalil nodded but realized soon enough this hadn't been the expected reaction.

"Ugh, sure, _fine._ I'm sorry too."

A smug grin made Zazzalil want to punch her pillow, but nevertheless it was evidence Jemilla was encouraged. She wheeled herself closer to Zazzalil's bed. Zazzalil had not seen her this enthusiastic before, perhaps accounted by her own persistent avoidance of her roommate this whole month they had known each other.

"I know we don't always agree," Jemilla said, "But I think that if we try each other's way, well, maybe we won't always _dis_agree."

Surely, there was a trap somewhere. Zazzalil narrowed her eyes on Jemilla but got only the same fake polite smile in reply.

"What are you saying?"

"One day," Jemilla offered. "We give each other a full day of doing things the other person's way exclusively, see how it feels. Then we switch."

Zazzalil bit the inside of her cheek and thought on the proposition. To have Jemilla do everything her way for a whole day... But then, the dreadful counterpoint of having to follow Jemilla's way. Still, what she wouldn't do to see Jemilla pull that stick out of her butt just once in her life. That seemed worth any goody-two-shoes tricks Jemilla might pull on her.

"A week," she bargained. "You'll do as I say for a week."

Jemilla was amused, but not duped.

"Three days."

"Two weeks!"

But that was testing Jemilla's patience unnecessarily.

"_Three days_," she repeated. "We'll do my way three days, then your way another three days."

"And on the seventh day, the Lord rested," Zazzalil concluded, nodding.

That had been yesterday. In anxious anticipation of the week to come, she had spent most of the night at Keeri's, only crawling back into bed in the small hours of the morning, her head buzzing with the cheapest whisky and the haunting ghost of all her bad ideas. Sleep had been difficult and short.

Zazzalil wasn't amazing at learning from the past and thinking things through. She never had been. Back when they were kids, she had made Keeri challenge her to eat a hundred crayons. All for nothing, too, as she had not puked out a rainbow as expected but a nasty brown-ish mess her dad had made her clean up herself. And yet by the next day, when Keeri was back to see her again, they had pulled out their coloring books and without even thinking about it, Zazzalil had nibbled on the crayons and felt sick to her stomach again. At least the crayons had been kosher.

Grown up, she hardly ever ate any drawing supply anymore but her dad wasn't there to make her clean up her other bad ideas anymore. All she could do was suffer through them.

"Oh, you're up!" Jemilla said when she walked out of the bathroom.

Somehow, it sounded like she had not been expecting it. To Zazzalil's complete lack of surprise, Jemilla herself looked like the concept of morning didn't work on her. Wholly too cheerful and pulled together when the sun was only now starting to dawn pink and purple outside the window. She was fully dressed, pretty curls brushed, makeup done (much better than Zazzalil would have, which said very little considering Zazzalil never wore any makeup), some perfume that was bordering on too sweet, but actually really pleasant. Jeans, a band t-shirt Zazzalil didn't know, a cute brown leather jacket, she didn't even have the weak point of dressing like an old lady, much as she acted like one. Jemilla always looked annoyingly too perfect, but perfect nonetheless. Zazzalil sighed.

"It's your turn," Jemilla reminded her.

She was looking through her things at her desk, as though she hadn't already prepared everything for the day a thousand times last night like she did every night. It was a weird ritual Zazzalil had observed with disgust and fascination.

"Zazzalil?" Jemilla asked and Zazzalil closed a mouth she only now realized had been gaping.

She jumped to her feet with an energy she had not had before and slammed the bathroom door behind her. A glance at the mirror augured nothing good, so she ignored it and got her ass in the shower. Following Jemilla's way today, she told herself, was permission enough to steal some of her soap. Then some more. Smelling like Jemilla was a tolerable sacrifice if it meant smelling like (she looked at the label) refreshing lime-mint. Jemilla had all the nice soaps and the nice lotions and the nice perfumes and every other nuance of delicious scents. Zazzalil had wanted to sneak some since she had first stepped foot in that bathroom. She supposed Jemilla's way had its upsides.

Water did not work miracles, not for millennia anyways, but Zazzalil did feel better after a few minutes under the powerful stream of close to painfully hot water. A squirt of Jemilla's shampoo and conditioner and her hair was softer than it had been in human memory. She stayed under there quite a bit longer than strictly needed after she was clean, hoping that the steam would cleanse away the exhaustion, but in the sad realization that it didn't, she stepped out. Jemilla's towels were huge and soft and smelled great and she wrapped one around her and breathed it in deeply before walking out of the bathroom to grab some clothes.

"What the... Zazzalil, put on something!"

"Oh, grow up, Jemilla."

Ostensibly closing her eyes as tight as she could, Jemilla reached to the ground to grab the towel Zazzalil had dropped there while she looked for clothes to wear. She made a show of turning around dramatically.

"Rule number one, let's just be fully clothed in each other's presence from now on," she said.

All of Zazzalil's clothes were lying in tangled piles inside her drawers and she took them out in a large messy bundle, scattering them on the bed to make her choice as she did every morning.

"_Oh no_," she replied sarcastically. "How ever am I going to manage to keep that one? Sheesh, who cares."

She suddenly took notice of the rest of the room and especially her side of it.

"Wait, did you clean up in here?"

Jemilla nodded with a hum.

"I like a tidy room," she said. "You know that, Zazzalil."

She evidently did. Zazzalil hardly recognized her half of the room without the thick layer of clutter covering it. She supposed she could deal with a cleanlier half for just three days. She'd just have to work extra hard on messing it back up again when her time came.

"You know," she said, picking through her shirts, smelling each of them to determine the one she would wear, "I'd never really believed that 6 am was a real time that existed. I thought it was just made up, like unicorns, narwhals or something."

She pulled on a plain purple t-shirt, avoiding one with a design featuring a rather indecent gesture she did not think Jemilla would approve of today - or any day.

"Narwhals are real as well," Jemilla noted.

Zazzalil breathed in and out deeply. Slowly, she was catching up with herself and feeling her senses come back to her. Her head was pounding but manageable. Perks and woes of waking up early.

"Well, now at 6 am I'm starting to think they might be."

Jemilla's smirk was between amusement and disdain, but she chose to keep to herself whatever remark she was brewing up. Shaking her head gently, she picked up her bag and handed Zazzalil hers.

"Why are we waking up so early again?"

Jemilla's reply was deadpan and instantaneous.

"To punish you for your wrongdoings." She smiled at her own joke. "We're getting breakfast, then I have to tutor a few people before my first class."

"At 6 am?" Zazzalil asked incredulously.

"Well, it'll be more like 7 with all the time you took."

"This much beauty takes time," Zazz replied.

Jemilla's eyes scanned her up and down blankly.

"Clearly."

But she gave Zazzalil what most likely wanted itself an encouraging smile and out they went.

"I rescheduled several pupils earlier in the week," she explained, "because of our little deal. I'll have my hands full with you when we do your way, I'm assuming, but I didn't want to have them suffer for it."

Zazzalil had not made any such arrangements. But then, her brains and her social status had allowed her to snatch a scholarship covering almost all her expenses and, living exceedingly frugally as she did, she could live on only working on Fridays most weeks. As that was in her half of the week, she told herself she would just have to drag Jemilla along with her to the shop.

Jemilla grabbed them breakfast from the cafeteria with, Zazzalil was glad, her own money. She was getting something infuriatingly healthy, which made Zazzalil feel like her shit would never get this together no matter how much she tried. Green tea, which she took without sugar or milk, a bowl of oatmeal and fruit, gross-ass green smoothie. Zazzalil didn't think she had ever even had one of those.

"I always skip breakfast," she admitted as they sat down at one of the many, many empty tables in the hall.

The hungover was starting to let her live a little but she had still only gotten an apple which she was slowly munching on and drowning in as much black coffee as she had dared to order on Jemilla's dime.

"I know," Jemilla replied and though she didn't speak out her opinion, it was conveyed all the same. "I never skip it."

The rest of the breakfast was spent in contemplative silence.

Jemilla, as it turned out, tutored high schoolers and freshmen most days of the week at the college library. She had fit four of them before her first class of the morning and to each of them, she explained that Zazzalil was her roommate and asked if they consented with her presence here. It was all around very courteous and, to Zazzalil, just as unnecessary. Her dedication to Jemilla's way didn't go quite as far as to follow along whichever math or physics homework she was helping these kids through and, even if she had, Zazzalil had no doubt that her own skills surpassed Jemilla's anyways. If anything, she became part of the library's furniture as she sat there, struggling to keep her eyes open but glad for the respite. It was, if not a nap, at least close enough and Zazzalil stretched herself whole at the end of it feeling much more energized than before.

"What is it that you study anyway?" Zazzalil asked.

Jemilla was reorganizing the sheets of notes she had taken out of her binder for the lessons and answered without looking up.

"Green engineering."

"A STEM gal, huh?"

"Mmh."

As Zazzalil had not been asked, she did not share anything about herself. So much for the getting-along-week.

They went to class. Jemilla's schedule was packed on Mondays, several lectures in a row in large halls. Zazzalil thrived better in smaller classes where her engagement was inevitable, but she supposed that no one was asking her to engage with Jemilla's classes anyways. She made to take a seat only for Jemilla to stare at her with judging bulging eyes.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Zazzalil frowned. She looked around, trying to figure out what on earth she might have been doing wrong, but coming up short, she shrugged.

"Going to class?"

"We're sitting in the front," Jemilla stated without any room for disagreement.

The day was torturously long and tiring. Jemilla was an attentive student, of course. She was all ears, all everything, jotting down detailed notes and answering questions without waiting to be called on. The first class, Zazzalil managed to keep some level of attention, especially since it was a familiar class she had taken a couple of semesters prior. By the second, she couldn't focus nearly as well and the pressure of outsmarting Jemilla had faded into laziness. She tried to browse her phone without Jemilla noticing − which was markedly easier than she had hoped, as Jemilla's heart and soul was poured into the lectures. The third was a class of her own which she couldn't afford to miss, usually a favorite of hers, but by then she was too tired to get any enjoyment out of it and she hoped the teacher would not hold it against her.

At lunch, they ate at the cafeteria again. Jemilla, Zazzalil noted, was eating the vegan option. She followed suit, only because that was usually the way to guarantee a kosher meal.

"I love Mondays," Jemilla sighed contentedly.

"I hate Mondays," Zazzalil replied.

The rest of the day went on as painfully as it had started, only with even less conversation than before. Jemilla seemed annoyed with her for reasons beyond her understanding − or perhaps for so many reasons that Zazzalil didn't have the patience to list off. Finally, the last class rolled around and Jemilla gave her a satisfied grin, gesturing them out.

Zazzalil dragged her exhausted feet back to the dorm. The length of the way home seemed to have doubled, quadrupled since the morning, so tired she was. In all her life, she did not remember a day she had put so much deliberate effort into anything, by her volition or otherwise. Jemilla, for her part, was as cheerful as ever. She seemed to thrive on doing everything exactly as perfect as could be done.

"That last one was my favorite lecture," she confided merrily.

Zazzalil gave her a dubious side-eye.

"Come on!" Jemilla insisted. "What's not to love about wildlife anatomy?"

"Well, first of all, _fuck_ bees," Zazzalil said. "They can all die, am I right?"

She had meant it as a joke, but one look from Jemilla made clear it had not been understood at such. Her nose up in the air, Jemilla turned from her and walked faster to the dorm.

"Some of us care about other things than our own navel, Zazzalil."

But she changed her mind. In an instant, she swirled back around and pointed an accusing finger in the air so close to Zazzalil's face it brushed against the tip of her nose.

"Bees are an essential part of the ecosystem and vital to the growth of crops in our agriculture. They're also _fucking_ cute and fuzzy and hard workers and all of that is more than I can say about you."

"I'm cute!" Zazzalil retorted, outraged, but Jemilla's rant was over and she ignored her. "No, wait, wait!"

Jemilla walked quite a bit faster than Zazzalil but she trotted to catch up and grabbed her arm. The reaction was magnetic - the repulsive kind, as Jemilla hopped away at the touch. She glared down at Zazzalil expectantly.

"I'm... I'm sorry, okay? I'm not used to..." She gestured to the space between them, "Talking. Getting along. Trying to, anyways."

"Evidently."

"I said I'm sorry!"

Jemilla looked her up and down. Zazzalil was small, made up for it with her bouncy charm and boundless creativity, but Jemilla had a way to make her feel insignificant and very, very small.

"Fine. Apology accepted," Jemilla said eventually with a shrug. "Zazzalil, I want us to get along, but sometimes, you make it very difficult."

She always enunciated Zazzalil's name more clearly than necessary, Zazz had noticed. She did not know if she loved or hated it.

"Let's just go home," Jemilla said, nodding towards the building, and for once Zazzalil followed along without another word.

Jemilla said nothing else till they were finally got back to their room. At once, Zazzalil dropped flat on the bed face first, tired out of her mind, and only half heard whatever it was Jemilla was saying, something about revising her notes. She groaned, but turned around. Jemilla's way evidently did not include an impromptu nap upon arriving home.

"... In the mean time, I have to call my ma, so be quiet."

Zazzalil had no plans whatsoever on not being quiet right then and there. She could only lie there and watch as Jemilla put her bag so neatly in its place, pulled out her phone and made the call.

It was a long-ish call full of bickering and fondness and probably longer than all the phone calls Zazzalil had made in her life. She vaguely remembered that Jemilla called her mother quite often, though she usually didn't judge it useful to stay in the room while that was happening. She supposed today was a sneak peak into the secret Jemilla backstory. News was given, anecdotes were shared, jokes were exchanged until, after many farewells, Jemilla's mother finally hung up.

Jemilla put down the phone, looking down at the blank screen with fondness before grabbing her lecture notes from her bag and starting to browse through them. She picked up a pencil, crossed a few things, jotted down some more. Zazzalil blinked, realizing she was staring. She was probably supposed to be reading over her own notes, she thought, to hold up her half of the bargain today. Classes the Jemilla way. Even a brief glance at the few loose sheets was enough to know that they were entirely useless, however. Overlapping paragraphs, illegible scribbles, messy bullet points that led nowhere, she had none of Jemilla's experience and, it seemed, much less of her skills. She sighed and looked back at Jemilla. So studious, so focused.

"Hey, Jemilla."

A quiet hum was the only acknowledgement she received. Zazzalil shoved her notes back into her backpack.

"Who's Schwoops?"

Jemilla was writing down something and finished her sentence before answering.

"You know, it's not polite to eavesdrop on private conversations." She swirled around on her desk chair and looked at Zazzalil. Her mouth seemed to be fighting the smirk that came so naturally to her. "Schwoopsie's my ex from high school."

Zazzalil had no such restraint. She grinned tauntingly, quirked an eyebrow at Jemilla and slouched back onto her bed comfortably.

"_Schwoopsie_? His parents named him Schwoopsie?"

Jemilla gave her that face Zazzalil couldn't stand, the one that said she was completely and entirely certain that she was smarter than any other person in attendance. Zazzalil hated feeling dumb. Especially dumber than Jemilla. She knew she wasn't, but Jemilla had a way to make her doubt herself.

"_She_ gave _her_self that name on her own, actually."

Zazzalil startled.

"Wait, what? You mean..."

"It's a nickname," Jemilla clarified. "God forbid someone named their child Schwoopsie."

"No, I got _that_, I meant..."

But there was that smile again and Zazzalil promptly shut her mouth. She grumbled under her breath.

"Well, sorry for thinking the getting-along-week was a good time for learning shit about each other..."

Jemilla stared at her for just a few seconds too long. Smiling knowingly, mysteriously, she swirled back around to look over her notes again.

"Here's some shit about me, then. I'm bi."

Of all the things they might have had in common, Zazzalil had least expected this one. She couldn't say she minded much, either. Jemilla was looking focused on her work again, though it could have been avoidance. Maybe she didn't want to see Zazzalil's opinion on her disclosure plain on her face. She couldn't have known.

"Oh, wow, uh... me too, actually," Zazzalil said tentatively. Jemilla said nothing but her pen stopped mid-air. "I'm bi too."

Jemilla let out some sort of scoff - had she been holding her breath?

"There you go," she said finally. "Our getting-along-week is working out real swell."


	2. Tuesday: Laundry Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second day of Jemilla and Zazzalil’s getting-along-week meets some hurdles, but none that they can’t beat. Also, it’s laundry day.

Jemilla did laundry on Tuesdays. It needed done, she enjoyed doing it, her life was made more efficient and orderly by doing it. She had a laundry basket that never got more than half full and she never had to wonder where her clothes had gone. They were either in the dresser, or she had worn them within the week and would be washing them on the next Tuesday, and therefore knew precisely where to find them in the laundry basket. Her clothes always smelled clean with the lavender scent she used and made every day a fresh new start.

Zazzall grunted when Jemilla gave her shoulder a gentle shake after the full song of her alarm had run its course. She turned in her sluggish semi-sleep, her weight dropping dead and eyes blinking lazily, slowly to the ceiling. For a moment she stared at Jemilla without expression, then seemed to catch up with the reality of her situation and closed her eyes much more firmly.

"You don't have classes on Tuesday mornings," she said in a slurry voice. "That's the mistake of leaving your timetable on your own fucking wall, _Jemilla_. You can't deceive me. I know all your secrets."

Jemilla smiled to herself. Zazzalil's hair was tousled with sleep and covering half of her face. The urge came to brush it off and put some order in it, but Jemilla was used to pushing down her urges. She wasn't a complete fool. She wasn't Zazzalil.

"We're going to the laundromat," she said. "So add that to your list of my secrets if you want. I do laundry on Tuesdays."

An inhumanly loud groan was her answer as Zazzalil turned her limp body back towards Jemilla. Her arm fell over the edge of the bed like a dead weight before her fingers wriggled and the whole arm shook itself awake. She rubbed her eyes stiffly. Another groan.

"What do you need me for? You can do that on your own."

But she stirred herself up on an elbow and slowly opened her eyes again. Her lids were heavy with sleep as she stared up at Jemilla.

"I know, I know, getting along and all that shit…"

Her nose was crinkling up in a little grimace that made Jemilla want to so something about it. She never did anything about it.

"Can’t we just get along telepathically instead?"

Jemilla cocked an eyebrow and Zazzalil sighed.

"Fine, fine, just… gimme ten. Or twenty. Go shower, I’ll probably be alive when you come back."

Jemilla hoped Zazzalil was putting herself whole into their little deal. She really fucking hoped so and she could only try and trust. She shut the bathrom door behind her. Zazzalil’s sweatshirt bundled under the sink, her things irreverently scattered across her half of the counter, her towels always vaguely smelly because she left them damp just anywhere. The room for improvement was so big it might have been a palace. The one lone bar of soap seemingly used for every part of her person in between Jemilla’s bottles in the shower. Jemilla put a smile on her face and bubbled away her concerns for the day to come.

"She has risen," she teased when after her shower she found Zazzalil crouched on her bed checking her phone with blank exhausted eyes.

Zazzalil looked up and huffed. She went back to her phone for a minute or two and finally stood. Of course, she dragged her feet to the shower, she dragged her feet to breakfast, out of it, she dragged her feet to the laundromat. The motion was what counted, Jemilla thought to herself, the hint of effort. The smallest of indications that this wasn’t all for naught. She couldn’t stand the thought of spending a whole year with her if things remained as they were.

"This bag is heavy," she groaned.

Jemilla smiled to herself. She had made Zazzalil take all of her dirty laundry to wash in one go − probably three or four loads, which seemed to be just about the extent of Zazzalil’s whole wardrobe.

"It would be lighter if you washed your shit every week, Zazzalil," she replied. "I rarely even fill up mine."

Zazzalil grunted, but made no reply otherwise. The laundromat was just a few streets over, courtesy to their shitty dorm providing only shitty machines that broke down every other week. Jemilla didn’t like bad surprises and had taken to the other place instead. She knew what to expect, if for a few quarters more. She held the door open for Zazzalil when they reached it and she supposed the groan she received was meant as thanks.

"Do you like, not separate your colors and fabrics and everything?" Zazzalil asked curiously when she watched Jemilla pour the content of her laundry bag in the washing machine next to the ones she was occupying. Jemilla eyed her pull out balled up clothes and shove them down the machines, packing tight. She smirked.

"I don’t," she said. "Look at us finding more things in common every day."

Under Zazzalil’s dubious stare, she explained.

"I don’t just buy _anything_," she said. "All my clothes match so I don’t need to sort. If I put in a little work at the start, it’s easier on the long run."

She had hoped for the lesson to register but it fell on deaf stubborn ears, as ever.

"Not me," Zazzalil said proudly, beaming. "I’m _complex_. None of my outfits match."

Matching or not, soon their things were tumbling in the same soapy hot water and Jemilla offered that they hopped to the small campus park nearby while they were getting washed. She liked to put to use her laundry morning for revising her classes and prepare her own quizzes for future study sessions. On the far edge of the park, there was a lone tree which was so large you could very comfortably sit underneath between its roots and that was where she made herself at home every week. Zazzalil stared it up and down before breaking into a grin which made Jemilla fear what she was going to say.

"That’s my weed tree!" She proclaimed so loud Jemilla was scared any passerbys might call the cops on her, before remembering that weed had been legalized in their state not too long ago and that the only law Zazzalil was breaking was decency and proper behavior.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

She lay her jacket flat to sit on as Zazzalil dropped straight on her ass next to her, leaning cozily against the tree to stare up at its fading foliage around this time of the year. Crossed legs, fuzzy calves, oversized black denim shorts, her hoodie half caught onto her ponytail, Zazzalil sat everywhere like she could make it her lair, like the world was her couch to relax on.

"That’s where Keeri and I totally smoke blunts like, all the time," she said and chuckled. "It’s a small world, huh?"

Jemilla frowned as she pulled out her notes. Suddenly, the tree didn’t seem nearly as comfortable, as great a find. She ignored the remark and started revising.

It wasn’t that she hated Keeri. From what she saw of her, they were infinitely different people but she had no deeply held resentment against her − she simply did not frequent her enough to. The snowglobe had been a pity, yes, but Keeri had not meant it as an offense. She could have easily forgotten the incident and the girl if Zazzalil wasn’t so keen on her. Inviting herself into their dorm room a dozen times in the few weeks they had lived there, charming and occupying Zazzalil’s attention with her oddities. Zazzalil was always, always talking to her.

She didn't know if they were dating, although clues built up that way every new day. They were spending every hour together and texting when they weren’t. Even now, Zazzalil had pulled her phone from her pocket and was chuckling at the screen and Jemilla did not need to glance at it to guess who was at the origin of such mirth. During class yesterday as well, the texting had been incessant. Jemilla bit back a sigh and went back to work but Zazzalil leaned her head against her shoulder and startled her.

"Whatcha doing?"

The sigh wasn’t restrained then and Jemilla turned a page.

"I’m working," she said. "I have work to do and so do you."

Zazzalil groaned and slouched even deeper.

"Didn’t you reread your notes last night? You can’t work _every_ day!"

"No, _you_ can’t work every day," she retorted. "This is how I live my life, Zazzalil. I thought we’d agreed to do this together."

The chiding was very temporarily accepted. Zazzalil shoved her phone back in the pocket at the bottom of her shorts and peeked over Jemilla’s shoulder before sighing again.

"I didn't even bring any notes," she whined. "How do you want me to do this without any notes?"

Jemilla shoved a stack of pages onto her lap. That wasn’t enough for Zazzalil, of course. Nothing ever was.

"Come on, I’m fine with trying but this is just a bunch of boring stuff! I don’t even take that class. It’s not how I roll."

For all the good the Zazzalil way seemed to do. Jemilla rolled her eyes and took back the notes so generously offered.

"How do _you_ revise, then?" She asked, more to be polite than because she had any trust in the insights Zazzalil might come up with. "You stare at your textbooks and hope the knowledge will fly its way into your brain?"

Zazzalil shrugged.

"I just take Keeri’s notes."

Probably unkindly, Jemilla snorted before she thought to stop herself. Keeri was thankfully nowhere around to hear. Hopefully as little around as Jemilla could have it.

"Well, _that_ sounds efficient," she said. "What do you do for classes you don’t share?"

"Oh, Keeri finds a way."

Jemilla turned to look at her quizzically but now Zazzalil was the one unbothered by the attempt at contact, nearly ignoring her. Eventually, she sighed in frustration. So much of Zazzalil could be so needlessly stubborn.

"Look, I don’t even wanna know."

"Great," Zazzalil replied. "Cause I don’t even wanna say."

She had pulled out her phone again but Jemilla noted with some satisfaction that she was browsing the portal of her physics class. They barely made any conversation, not a word till her timer vibrated in her pocket and they went back to the laundromat to switch their loads over to the dryers. They sat there on the uncomfortable plastic seats next to each other, so close their thighs touched yet worlds apart. Earlier so keen on scolding Zazzalil for her scattered attention, Jemilla was finding herself having difficulties to focus and when finally, their laundry was done, she was glad for it. She had barely progressed on her notes at all.

"I’m folding my things," she announced. "And you are yours."

Of course, some grumbling of protest, but Zazzalil obeyed and folded the huge pile of mismatched clothes piece by piece. Jemilla, done long before her, even helped her to it and grinned smugly at the reluctant words of thanks from her darling roommate.

"There," she said with satisfaction as she handed Zazzalil the last folded shirt − Zazzalil owned about three pairs of shorts, as many hoodies, jackets, but a multitude of shirts with graphics all more revolting than the next. "Was that very hard?"

"Yes," Zazzalil replied with some mood which Jemilla chose again to let slide.

Living with Zazzalil was nothing but a whole war of battles she chose not to pick. Back at the dorm, she put up another fight when Jemilla instructed her to sort away the clean laundry into her half of the dresser. Her several bags of folded clothes had been dropped on the bed as she entered − along with herself, lazily staring up at the ceiling. Jemilla stood over her, hands at her hips.

"Come on," Zazzalil said in that insufferable whiny tone of hers Jemilla couldn’t stand. "Can’t that wait? It’ll get done eventually anyways."

"Things don’t just _get done_, Zazz," Jemilla retorted. "Either you do them or I do."

"Yeah, yeah…"

Jemilla started putting away her own bag of laundry, only a week’s worth, not enough to make the chore unbearable or even unpleasant. It smelled clean and fresh, it was still a little warm. If anything, she enjoyed it. A short pile of shirts was placed on top of the ones already in the drawer, a matching row of colors.

"Our bathroom is clean because _I_ clean it," she said and shoved her jeans into the bottom drawer where they belonged. "My half of the room is tidy because _I_ put things back in their spot. My clothes are clean because _I_ wash them and they’re in my drawers because _I_ put them there. There’s no magic here."

Surely, she was too carried away, too upset with a girl who couldn’t give a damn. Jemilla frowned at every garment she shoved back in place and then rearranged guiltily for fear they would become wrinkled. She paid no mind to Zazzalil, or at least tried not to, but after half a minute, she heard Zazzalil get to her feet. The bags were dragged next to the dresser and silently, she began to stack everything away in her drawers, even folding whatever clothes were still there, haphazardly bundled in the corners. When Jemilla was done with her things, she helped her with it, though not a word was exchanged. They accidentally glanced at one another, then away. Jemilla bit back a sigh.

Her afternoon class went much more smoothly than the day before. Zazzalil was making more effort, that was evident. She had brought her laptop and was following along with the slides. The class was some generic engineering lecture, mostly theory with the occasional question to the students and, though Zazzalil never raised her hand to answer, she nodded at every correct reply and shook her head at the mistakes before the professor ever gave her expected answer. Jemilla focused on her notes. She tried to.

"You did good," she told Zazzalil after class, trying to hide her surprise. "I didn’t know you… erm… I didn’t know."

Zazzalil shrugged casually as she packed up her laptop. Jemilla pointed her to the study nook she liked to occupy between classes, a small empty room at the end of the hall, and Zazzalil followed obediently.

"I took that class last year," Zazzalil said.

Jemilla remembered that she was a year older than her, which always came as a surprise. Her maturity certainly never indicated so. Still, she was glad for the mood going upwards as the day went and she gestured Zazzalil to the chair next to hers. Zazzalil sat inelegantly, leg folded over the other and resting an elbow on it as she checked her phone for a second before putting it away again.

"You did? What do you actually study?" Jemilla asked, realizing she had never thought to enquire before.

"Cars and stuff."

Jemilla quirked an eyebrow.

"And stuff?" She repeated, perhaps with some unnecessary sass. "You don’t know your own major for sure?"

Zazzalil rolled her eyes, perhaps with undeserved fondness.

"Automotive engineering," she said. She balanced herself on the rear legs of her chair, but Jemilla put her hand firmly at the back of it to bring her back on all four. "Jeez, could you live without everything being so perfectly accurate all the time?"

Jemilla chose to ignore that. Another battle to add to the ever growing list. Every miserable day so far.

"It’s more of a hands on approach, really," Zazzalil explained, "But they gotta put a label on everything."

"So do you want to be like a mechanic?"

"Uh huh," Zazzalil nodded.

She seemed a little bored with the conversation, back on her phone idly. Jemilla felt a distant tinge of disappointment inside of her. Zazzalil’s attention was hard to grab sometimes. A lot of the times, in fact, though Keeri never seemed to struggle, as evidenced by Zazzalil’s fast typing at the present.

"You don’t even have a car," Jemilla said.

Zazzalil looked up. She was frowning a little, though more confused than angry.

"Well, first of all I do, I’m working on it at the garage, it’s gonna look fucking dope when I’m done," she said slowly, "But not all of us are rollin’ in dough, Jemilla, I’m a child of ’the system’, shit’s hard."

She had made airquotes around her face and then immediately picked up the forlorn phone again to send another text without looking at Jemilla anymore. Jemilla told herself this was for the best. She had come here to study, hadn’t she? At the very least to sort her notes from the lectures and narrow down difficult areas to focus on. But this was not just any Tuesday, it was not just any week and they had made the promise to each other to try and coexist somewhat peacefully. She cleared her throat.

"So am I," she said.

Zazzalil looked up.

"So are you what?"

Jemilla toyed with her mechanical pen. She wasn’t particularly uncomfortable with her past and this was an opening to try and tame the beast that was Zazzalil, so why was she nervous?

"I got taken from my mom when I was a baby and placed in foster care. My ma was my second foster home, she adopted me when I was five."

Something soft was veiling Zazzalil’s eyes, though her stare became a little more resolute when she realized that the conversation was now for her to fill. She looked down and took a big breath.

"I, erm, I lost my mom when I was a baby," she said. Her voice was a little distant and she wouldn’t meet Jemilla’s eyes, though she couldn’t blame her for that. Some part of her wanted to hold her hand, to offer some comfort, but she wasn’t certain it would be what was needed. "Then my dad when I was nine."

"Oh. I’m sorry."

Zazzalil shrugged, faking indifference, but her eyes told another story.

"It wasn’t like… Eh, it was some disease, he never really told me, I think probably cancer of some sort. I didn’t have any family that could take me in so I was placed too but I didn’t, erm, thrive. I think I went through like fifteen homes across the state before I turned eighteen. So now I’m on my own."

She looked at Jemilla then and gave her a tentative smile.

"I was a little brat, can you believe that?"

Jemilla wanted to smirk, to fall back into the ease of bickering, but was filled in this instant with nothing but compassion. She had never thought of her own story as tear-jerking, of course, and more than ever, she was reminded that there was much less fortunate than her. Zazzalil had regained all her countenance, though, and leaned her chair back again. This time, Jemilla didn’t stop it.

"I’m much better now, as you can see," she said, grinning. "I even got my bat mitzvah a few years too late."

Jemilla had not known she was Jewish. She had also not known she was an orphan. She wondered which of the facts was more important to Zazzalil, and how many core parts of herself she had not yet revealed to her. She smiled back.

"Well, that’s nice."

They went back to studying − as she noted that Zazzalil was, in fact, looking at some of her classes on her laptop, though the distraction was frequent. She didn’t choose to chide her for it. Later, a student of hers came to be tutored and Zazzalil sat a few seats away to give them the space to work together. Jemilla didn’t know if she was being observed or if coincidence hit several times, but more than once, she looked up to find Zazzalil glancing her way too. Both of them looked away, of course, Jemilla back to her lesson and Zazzalil back to whichever of her screens, but it happened again.

When the boy left, then their gazes crossed for good. Zazzalil was the one to smile first. Jemilla smiled back.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment if you've read this and enjoyed it! It means the world.


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